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Yunel Escobar escapade a black eye on Blue Jays organization: Mudhar

The Jays&rsquo; handling of the Yunel Escobar situation is a textbook case of how not to do public relations.

Jays shortstop Yunel Escobar addresses a news conference at Yankee Stadium last week after playing a game wearing an offensive message written in Spanish on his eyeblack. Escobar was suspended three games for the incident.
(Kathy Willens / The Associated Press)

We should start by giving credit where it’s due. Kudos to the Blue Jays’ Yunel Escobar for finding a completely new way to screw up. Writing on eyeblack has been banned in other sports leagues but the Jays shortstop clearly took things to another level with his homophobic message.

He’s now in the same class as quarterback Tim Tebow, whose penchant for writing Bible verses on his eyeblack during his days with the Florida Gators led to the NCAA banning messages on them. That’s something, right?

Beyond that, from a media perspective, this week has been a comedy of errors for the Jays organization. The club’s handling of the Escobar situation is a textbook case of how not to do public relations, starting with the fact that Escobar got on the field wearing his offensive message, to the message being unearthed online and circulated via social media, to the terrible, hastily organized news conference last Tuesday.

Watching this one has been interesting, with sportswriters becoming linguistic experts, cultural critics and judge and jury as to what Escobar meant by his actions. After watching Escobar’s public response, I’m still not sure. Let’s start with that blighter of a news conference.

The first rule of making an apology in the media is to convince us you mean it. Be contrite. If you’re going to throw yourself on the mercy of the court of public opinion, convince us why we should give you a second chance. In the world of infidelity scandal apologies, it’s Dave Letterman (do you even remember his?) versus Tiger Woods (you remember his).

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That didn’t happen Tuesday. Escobar looked uncomfortably chastened, but that was about it. The two takeaways from that presser were: 1) to paraphrase Escobar, “It’s a word, but it doesn’t mean anything;” and 2) that this is a societal problem (according to GM Alex Anthopoulos) that isn’t a problem in major-league locker rooms (according to manager John Farrell). Um, OK.

If you buy that this was not malicious and chalk it up to Escobar’s stupidity — and really, this does not feel like a John Rocker-level debacle — then the player’s three-game suspension might actually be fair.

The organization should learn that there are certain situations when you need some help. No offence to the Jays’ PR people, but some professional crisis-management people should have been called for advice. In fact, it might still be worth giving someone a call. The team’s strategy seems to have been to deal with the problem quickly and hope it gets forgotten in the last few weeks of the season.

The next question concerns the clubhouse, which still seems to have a “what’s the big deal?” attitude. As veteran infielder Omar Vizquel said to the Star about Escobar’s message: “It’s just a word we use on an everyday basis. I don’t know why people are taking this so hard and so out of place or out of proportion.”

It’s too bad for Vizquel, as one ramification of this incident is that it overshadowed his passing of Babe Ruth on the all-time hit list, a rare piece of good news in the Jays’ lost season. His reaction gives the organization a chance to really address the issue of homophobia in sports, but it’s more likely that the clubhouse, feeling under siege by the media, will get even more tight-lipped.

The Escobar incident has also opened the door to criticism of the entire Jays organization. Before last Monday, in this season that started with so much hope, most knowledgeable Jays fans would have chalked up their sinking feeling to the team’s injury troubles. Now Escobar is a sign of larger problems.

As Sportsnet columnist Stephen Brunt wrote: “The incident is the final straw, the last depressing stake in the heart (you’d hope). The perfect, awful capper for a baseball annus horribilis.”

I mention Brunt because of how Sportsnet covered the incident. Their website was a little bit late, posting a Canadian Press wire report at 9 p.m. Monday, then Brunt’s article at 11:52 a.m. Tuesday. Could the delay have had anything to do with the fact that Sportsnet is owned by Rogers, which also owns the Jays? Scott Woodgate, Sportsnet’s vice-president of news, chalked up the delay to being careful, needing to vet the photo of Escobar. I’m satisfied that while the site weirdly took its time, one only needed to turn to Sportsnet Radio, which hopped on the incident fairly quickly, and listen to how Bob McCown and Jeff Blair, and Gregg Zaun on TV, lambasted the organization.

In that sense, as MLSE joins the Rogers (and Bell) stable, and the majority of sports media people in town loosely become co-workers, even Rogers’ own people criticized the organization for how it handled this.

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